This invention relates to a domestic appliance suitable for installation in furniture frames of varying designs.
Whilst in Europe a furniture niche for installation of a domestic appliance has even lateral walls made of wood or layered chipboard with a constant thickness of typically 16 mm to 19 mm, whose front edges form one of the frames surrounding the niche, in the USA in particular, forms of construction also known as “face-frame kitchen” are widespread, wherein an installation niche has a stable frame made from solid wood at the front, but behind it has lateral walls made from a thin-walled composite material of lesser strength.
The body of a domestic appliance that is to be mounted in such a furniture niche irrespective of design, must be a certain degree smaller than the frame. It is known for two cover sections that extend beyond the front vertical edges of the body to be provided on the body of such a domestic appliance, which—in the finished, installed state—are in contact with the front of the frame of the niche and thus conceal any gap between the lateral walls of the niche and those of the body. In order to install the domestic appliance in the furniture niche in a stable manner, the cover sections must also be screwed to the frame. In a kitchen of the European design described above, a fixing screw which is screwed through a hole in a cover section from the lateral direction into the lateral wall of the niche must maintain sufficient distance from the front edge of the lateral wall to ensure that the latter is not ruptured by the screw. In a kitchen of the “face-frame” type, however, a correspondingly placed screw does not go in the frame but in the lateral wall board located behind it, which does not offer any hold. In this case a screw must be driven into the solid wooden frame. Since the positioning of the screws in the profile sections depends on the design of the kitchen yet visible empty screw holes are felt to be aesthetically displeasing, it is generally left to the domestic appliance installer to drill appropriate holes in the cover sections for the respective kitchen type. The manual labor associated with this makes installing the appliance more expensive for the customer, and entails a not insignificant risk that damage may occur to the profile sections or the furniture frame as a result of incorrect procedure.
Devices are also known in which a connected frame is provided at the location of the two vertical cover sections, the frame extending along the vertical edges and the upper horizontal edge of the front surface of the body. However, this presents the problem in that production tolerances in the dimensions of the body or the frame cannot be compensated for and are clearly visible. A side-by-side installation of several appliances is not possible without destroying the frame or preparing a costly special frame for adjacently located appliances.